Active crustal shortening in NE Syria revealed by deformed terraces of the River Euphrates

The Africa–Arabia plate boundary comprises the Red Sea oceanic spreading centre and the left‐lateral Dead Sea Fault Zone (DSFZ); however, previous work has indicated kinematic inconsistency between its continental and oceanic parts. The Palmyra Fold Belt (PFB) splays ENE from the DSFZ in SW Syria and persists for ～400 km to the River Euphrates, but its significance within the regional pattern of active crustal deformation has hitherto been unclear. We report deformation of Euphrates terraces consistent with Quaternary right‐lateral transpression within the PFB, indicating anticlockwise rotation (estimated as 0.3° Ma^?1 about 36.0°N 39.8°E) of the block between the PFB and the northern DSFZ relative to the Arabian Plate interior. The northern DSFZ is shown to be kinematically consistent with the combination of Euler vectors for the PFB and the Red Sea spreading, resolving the inconsistency previously evident. The SW PFB causes a significant earthquake hazard, previously unrecognized, to the city of Damascus.     

Performance of the horizontal drains in upstream shell of earth dams on the upstream slope stability during rapid drawdown conditions

Slope stability analysis during rapid drawdown is an important consideration in the design of embankment dams. During rapid drawdown, the stabilizing effect of the water on the upstream face is lost, but the pore water pressures within the embankment may remain high. As a result, the stability of the upstream face of the dam can be much reduced. Installing horizontal drains is a very efficient and cost-effective method for reducing the pore water pressure and increasing the stability of the upstream slope. The theory of horizontal drains in the upstream shell of earth dams is well established, but there seems to be limited resources available for the design of this type of horizontal drains. Hence, this study is focused on the performance of horizontal drains in the upstream shell of the slope of earth dams on the upstream slope stability during rapid drawdown conditions. The parametric study has been conducted on the variation of horizontal drain parameters such as the number of drains, their length, and their location. In this study, ten scenarios were analyzed based on different drainage configurations and the performance of each scenario is investigated on the seepage and the upstream slope stability during rapid drawdown conditions using finite element and limit equilibrium methods. The results demonstrated that the stability of the upstream slope during rapid drawdown conditions increases by increasing the number of drains. The length of drains extending further from its intersection with the critical failure surface does not provide any significant change in the factor of safety. Finally, the study also found that installing drains in the lower region of the upstream shell of earth dams gives more stability than those installed in higher elevations.     

Introducing landscape accuracy metric for spatial performance evaluation of land use/land cover change models

Performance evaluation is a critical step for land use/land cover (LULC) change modelling. It can be conducted through pixel quantity and its geographical location according to majority of current approaches. It is hence important to know to what extent spatial patterns of a given landscape are properly replicated in simulated LULC maps. Therefore, a new validation metric, named as landscape accuracy metric (LAM), is introduced by inspiration from landscape ecology. Unlike pixel quantity validation metrics, model performance is measured by LAM through quantifying spatial patterns including structure, composition and configuration attributes. The functionality of LAM was studied to assess the performance of the built-up change simulation under historical, ecological and stochastic scenarios, applying Cellular Automata Markov model. LAM is a flexible measure such that modellers can apply this metric through adding or eliminating various metrics of their interest in a selective manner and under different environmental circumstances.     

Application of multifractal modeling technique in systematic geochemical stream sediment survey to identify copper anomalies: A case study from Ahar,Azarbaijan, Northwest Iran

This research is based on the application of stream sediments to mineral exploration. Identifying the geochemical anomalies from background is a fundamental task in exploration geochemistry. This paper applied the element concentration–area (C–A) model, to separating the geochemical anomalies from background based on a fractal approach and for the compilation of geochemical mapping from stream sediment samples (n = 620) of the Ahar region (Iran), where some Cu mineralization occurs. Comparisons of the known copper occurrences against the anomalous area created using thresholds from C–A method illustrate these hits. All of known Cu mineralizations and moreover defines two extra Cu anomaly districts. Additional sampling (n = 186) around new Cu anomaly confirms this anomaly within the district.     

Parameter estimation of copula functions using an optimization-based method

Application of the copulas can be useful for the accurate multivariate frequency analysis of hydrological phenomena. There are many copula functions and some methods were proposed for estimating the copula parameters. Since the copula functions are mathematically complicated, estimating of the copula parameter is an effortful work. In the present study, an optimization-based method (OBM) is proposed to obtain the parameters of copulas. The usefulness of the proposed method is illustrated on drought events. For this purpose, three commonly used copulas of Archimedean family, namely, Clayton, Frank, and Gumbel copulas are used to construct the joint probability distribution of drought characteristics of 60 gauging sites located in East-Azarbaijan province, Iran. The performance of OBM was compared with two conventional methods, namely, method of moments and inference function for margins. The results illustrate the supremacy of the OBM to estimate the copula parameters compared to the other considered methods.     

On a Bernoulli's integral pertaining to gas flow in close binary systems

A Bernoulli's integral supplemented with the equation of continuity provides a solution for the motion of gas surrounding a binary system.There exist two velocity modes whose streamlines are confined within appropriate equipotential surfaces.     

A ground motion prediction equation for JMA instrumental seismic intensity for shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regimes

The JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) seismic intensity scale has been used in Japan as a measure of earthquake ground shaking effects since 1949. It has traditionally been assessed after an earthquake based on the judgment of JMA officials. In 1996 the scale was revised as an instrumental seismic intensity measure (I_JMA) that could be used to rapidly assess the expected damage after an earthquake without having to conduct a survey. Since its revision, Japanese researchers have developed several ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for I_JMA using Japanese ground motion data. In this paper, we develop a new empirical GMPE for I_JMA based on the strong motion database and functional forms used to develop similar GMPEs for peak response parameters as part of the PEER (Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center) Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) project. We consider this relationship to be valid for shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regimes for moment magnitudes ( M ) ranging from 5.0 up to 7.5–8.5 (depending on fault mechanism) and rupture distances ranging from 0 to 200 km. A comparison of this GMPE with relationships developed by Japanese researchers for crustal and shallow subduction earthquakes shows relatively good agreement among all of the relationships at M 7.0 but relatively poor agreement at small magnitudes. Our GMPE predicts the highest intensities at small magnitudes, which together with research on other ground motion parameters, indicates that it provides conservative or upwardly biased estimates of I_JMA for M <5.5. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The spatial analysis of thunderstorm hazard in Iran

In this study, monthly, quarterly, and annual frequency data of thunderstorm days of 25 long-term synoptic weather stations during the period from 1960 to 2010 were analyzed applying Ward’s Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (WHCA) Method and Kriging Geostatistical Method (KGM). The results of temporal analysis of Thunderstorm Days (TD) in Iran showed that in terms of frequency, seasonal occurrence of this phenomenon is mostly in transitional seasons of spring and autumn. The results of WHCA to find homogeneous places in terms of synchronization and timing of TD reflects the fact that there are five clusters with similar memberships, including the North West, West, the southern part, northern, central, and northeastern parts, eastern regions, and center of Iran, and in this classification, the frequency of occurrence of TD reduces in the same order the regions are mentioned. In contrast, the lowest frequency of TD is in summer and winter seasons. In this study, it was found that among various deterministic and geostatistical methods, KGM is the most suitable one for thunderstorms hazard zonation and for classifying the different regions based on thunderstorm occurrence; WHCA is more suitable than other methods. The results of spatial analysis of thunderstorms point to the fact that the core of the mentioned thunderstorms is mostly in mountainous areas, particularly, highlands of North West and West of Iran. With regard to place, in the West part of the country, especially North West (Tabriz, Oroomieh, and Zanjan stations) and West, thunderstorms have higher frequencies, while the South East, South, Central, and eastern regions are less affected by the thunderstorm hazard.     

Distance scaling of vertical and horizontal response spectra of the Loma Prieta earthquake

Attenuations of the vertical and horizontal response spectra of the 17 October 1989 Loma Prieta, California, earthquake are developed through analyses of the ground motion at 53 sites within a 100 km radius of the source. The analyses are performed on the spectral ordinates for 16 incremental periods ranging from 0.05 to 2.0 sec. The response spectra are modelled empirically for two different site conditions characterized by rock and stiff-soil geologies. Data analysis is performed by the application of a non-linear multivariate regression procedure allowing for distance and site factor as independent variables. Variation of the vertical-to-horizontal (V/H) spectral ratios with wave frequency and distance shows the same behaviour as observed previously in the widely separated geographic regions of northeastern Taiwan and east-central Iran. The predicted ratios at sites underlain by stiff soil are generally higher than the commonly used value of 2/3 at high frequencies ( > 5 Hz) in the near-source region (R < 30 km), but reduce to 1/2 or less at longer periods and farther distances. This behaviour is also observed at rock sites; however, it is somewhat less pronounced. With a faster attenuation of spectral ordinates at higher frequencies, the shape of the response spectrum is found to change with distance. As expected, the spectral attenuation with distance is generally higher for the vertical spectrum than for the horizontal spectrum. The difference is particularly significant at the higher-frequency end of spectrum. Site amplification factors for stiff soil with respect to rock geology varies between 1.17 and 1.72 for horizontal spectrum and 1.01 and 1.81 for vertical spectrum. Spectral amplifications at four sites underlain by soft soil and artificial fill, are also evaluated. This is done by a comparison of the observed spectra with those predicted for rock geology at corresponding distances. As expected, the resulting amplification factors at soft-soil sites show significant increase relative to those at sites underlain by rock.